


the red book

by tardiself



Category: Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons), Trollhunters - Daniel Kraus & Guillermo del Toro
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, No on-screen death, honestly my entire goal with this was to make myself want to die, if you get caught in the crossfire that's on you, strong dad!strickler vibes, this takes place a couple hundred years in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24516325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardiself/pseuds/tardiself
Summary: Jim has lived so long, he can't even remember how old he is. How can he be expected to remember anything about his past as a human being?
Comments: 20
Kudos: 46





	the red book

Jim doesn't remember how old he is. He lost track so long ago... Within the first hundred years.

Strickler says he's forgotten a lot over the centuries. He never elaborates. He doesn't even laugh when Jim punches his arm and says, "And I guess you remember everything, huh?"

No, he doesn't laugh. Doesn't smile. Doesn't speak to Jim for days, and makes him wonder what he had done wrong.

He tries to ask Blinky how old he is. Blinky's six eyes scrutinize him and open wide when he comes to his conclusion. "Ah, sixteen last I checked, Master Jim. Then again, I haven't checked in a while."

Jim laughs and lets it go. No, of course, he's not sixteen. He doesn't even remember being sixteen. In his bones, he's older than sixteen. He's been alive for so long.

When Strickler finally speaks to him again, it's to wish him a happy birthday. Is it his birthday? He has no idea. But every year Strickler wishes him a happy birthday, and Jim accepts it as though he knows it's true.

He knows nothing about himself, he realizes. He has been, has always been, the Trollhunter. The only Trollhunter. He is alone, and that is all he knows. The truth hits him like a fist in the stomach, and the Trollhunter spends what may be his birthday (according to Strickler) by himself, unable to stop from crying.

"Jim." It's Strickler's voice. Trollmarket has been quiet, and Jim sits alone, watching the steady glow of the new heartstone. Why is it called "new heartstone"? What happened to the old one? He should read Blinky's history books more often. But he remembers not wanting to... Why is that the only thing he remembers?

"Jim, are you listening to me?" Strickler calls again. Jim wonders why he calls him Strickler. Everyone else calls him Stricklander.

"Yeah, I'm listening." No, he isn't.

"Jim, I can tell when you're not listening to me."

Those words send a jolt up Jim's spine. In Strickler's face, he can almost see a human man with graying hair and the authority to make him do something terrible... like write a paper or something. Or remember something about history. Almost instinctively he looks to his right, expecting some kind of sympathetic look from someone. Maybe an old friend who is just as afraid of that sentence. No, there's no one there.

"What was the question?" Jim asks.

Stricklander's leathery face softens for just a moment and regains its hardness just as quickly. "There's been an incident on the surface. They're asking for the Trollhunter."

Of course, the Trollhunter. He wonders how many people know that his name is actually Jim. He shivers as he wonders how long he'll be able to remember that. He'll remember at least while Blinky and Strickler are around. A few hundred years longer.

No time to worry about that. Jim answers the surface call, taking care that the sun has set by the time he leaves Trollmarket. He almost misses daylight, even though that's impossible. You can't miss something you've never had, never felt. But he feels like he's almost sure that he's felt the warmth of the sun before. Or maybe he can just imagine it well.

He treks through the forest, searching for the problem. Whatever it is, it's good at hiding. There's almost nothing. No trace of the creature he's tracking. That is, until a twig snaps. Daylight is in his hand in a moment, eager to defend him. In the glow of his blade, he can see nothing but a patch of trees.

There's nothing remarkable about the trees, or so he thinks at first. Upon closer inspection, however, there are markings - an inscription - carved into one. A heart enveloping the initials C.N. J.L., Jr.

He should keep moving. He wants to keep moving. But the sight of the carving has him paralyzed for reasons he can't understand. When he can move, he can only move towards it, his hand reaching out and tracing the letters. They feel old, nearly as old as the trees themselves.

Something lands with a distinct thud behind him, and it's the last thing he remembers before the world goes dark.

He wakes up in Arcadia Hospital, a place he has been many times in the past. He knows the doctors and nurses there who have had to patch him up when he couldn't get back to Trollmarket. As long as he can remember, he has always found that something is comforting about the doctor's coat. In what remains of his memories, he can see it flashing bright white along the dark corridors of Trollmarket. This is, perhaps, his most vivid memory.

"You're all good," his doctor assures him when he asks. "Just a concussion, and given your troll physiology, it should take a few hours to heal at a maximum." Human medicinal practices have come a long way, hand in hand with the trolls.

The doctor continues, "Stricklander was the one to bring you here. He found you unconscious in the woods. Should I send him in?"

Jim nods, and a moment later, Strickler appears at his door. His long hair is falling chaotically around his face, and his eyes are more sunken in than usual. A book is tucked under his arm, but it's clear that it hasn't been read in a very long time. "Distracted again, were you, Jim?" he questions. "Or maybe just slow. Perhaps you surprised us all this time and took dangerous and unnecessary risks. . . again."

Jim winces at Strickler's harsh words. "Hi, dad," he says quietly.

The hard line that is Strickler's mouth softens into a concerned frown as he walks to sit on the edge of Jim's bed. "Keep this up, and before long we won't have a Trollhunter, at all." He says it gently, but he doesn't need to. Jim knows Strickler cares more about him than his role as the Trollhunter.

"It won't come to that," Jim promises. "It's just a concussion. Happens all the time." He nods at the book. "What's that?"

Strickler takes the book into his hands and turns it this way and that, studying the outside just as he might the inside. There's no title on the red cover, and the pages are warped with water damage. Bad water damage. Like it had been through a flood. Strickler doesn't answer Jim. "I saw what distracted you. What it was in the forest that caught your eye. I understand why it stole your focus, even if you don't."

His words confuse Jim. The significance of the initials on the tree escapes Jim from a logical standpoint. Strickler was all logic. Strategy. Reason. And logically, there is no reason at all that he was stopped in his tracks by six insignificant letters.

"Do you know," Strickler began after a spell of silence. "I loved being a history teacher. Really. But when I stopped. . . Well, I never thought I'd have to teach someone about their own history. But it's been a long time, Jim, and your mind wasn't made to hold all of those memories."

On instinct, Jim scoots a little bit away from Strickler. "What do you mean?" Jim questions with a nervous laugh. "You're not making sense."

Strickler tries again with more urgency. "Jim, this book is you. All of the memories you've forgotten in one little leather-bound volume. It's frightening, I understand, but try. I beg of you, Jim: just try to look at it."

Jim's first thought is to reject the offer. Whatever memories he's forgotten must be painful, or unimportant, or just too overwhelming. Otherwise, he wouldn't have forgotten them. And he certainly doesn't want to look in on his past self like a stranger at a window and think about what he can't remember. But Strickler's plea is so earnest, that Jim wouldn't dare refuse it. So, he reaches out for the book, and Strickler places it in his hand.

For a moment, he only sits there and looks at the cover. He's not sure where to begin, and he's desperately afraid. So, he just opens the book and starts at the beginning. There's a picture of a young boy there: one that he doesn't recognize at all. He's in a blue jacket, and his eyes are somewhat uncanny. Well, not uncanny. Just familiar, even though none of the rest of him is. Then he reads the caption that's scrawled out in messy cursive:

Jim, 12 years old

"Who is this kid?" he questions, his voice coming out in a choked whisper. He already knows the answer, he's fairly sure. But he has to ask nonetheless.

"It's you," Strickler responds. Simple words for a complicated answer.

"But it's not," Jim insists. "He's a human."

"You were human once," Strickler replies, just as insistent.

Jim shuts the book with a thud and hands it out to Strickler. "No," he says simply.

"I'm not taking that book back, Jim," he says firmly. It's that tone of voice again. The kind that makes Jim feel like he's just been scolded in front of a whole classroom.

Had Strickler said he was a history teacher once?

Jim emphasizes his reach. He wants to toss the book far away from him, but he would hate to see the look on Strickler's face if he did it. "Well, I'm not keeping it," Jim insists. "This book is making you go crazy."

"I'm not crazy, Jim," Strickler answers calmly. Something is boiling under the surface of that exterior.

Jim shakes his head. "Blinky would've told me."

Whatever was boiling before is starting to leak through. "Blinkous would have protected you from the truth until even he forgot it."

That didn't sound unlike Blinky, Jim had to admit. There were still flaws in the story. "I'm the Trollhunter. How could there be a human Trollhunter?"

Strickler finally does snatch the book away from him. He's either angry or frustrated. They tend to be the same look on his face. "You want to know how?" he half-yells. He frantically flips to a place in the book where the spine is broken. Strickler turns the book to face Jim and a human woman is on the page. She has red hair and glasses, and she's wearing a doctor's coat. That same boy from earlier - the boy who is supposed to be him - is in front of her with a birthday cake and they're both smiling at the camera.

The sight makes Jim stop breathing.

"There can be a human Trollhunter," Strickler insists. "Because this human woman gave birth to him - to you! Because this woman raised you all by herself to be worthy of that title! Everything you have ever done right, you owe to Barbara Lake!"

Jim still hasn't quite caught his breath back. His mother? No. No, he'd never even thought about mothers. Not in a hundred years. But why? Everyone has a mother. Where was his? Why had he forgotten about her?

Perhaps the things he had forgotten were too painful to be remembered, but he had forgotten his mother. At last, he took a breath and the book.

Me and Jim - Jim's 13th B-Day :)

It hit him like a battering ram to the stomach. His mother's handwriting. Lazy, quick cursive.

The page over, his human self is standing with another boy the same age.

Jim and Toby. The boys are back in town!

"Who's Toby?" Jim asks, not tearing his eyes away from the page. His voice comes out far more choked than he expected it would be.

Strickler's voice is choked, too. "He was your best friend when you were a boy. In fact, he was your best friend for a very long time. His second great-grandchildren own the Domzalski Museum of Human/Troll History in San Francisco. Impressive collection of gemstones. You and I went once after he died, and you never went back."

Was that memory so painful that he had wanted to forget everything about his best friend?

He tore through pages of him and Toby. Him and Barb- his mom. Always the same three faces.

Until he came across a new one.

Jim and Claire watching How to Train your Dragon. How sweet!

The human Jim is on the couch, and his hands are covering his face. However, Claire is bright and smiling and sitting very close to HumanJim as the picture is taken.

Jim tries to understand why he can't breathe again and why this time his heart has all but stopped.

C.N.

J.L., Jr.

"This is Claire," he says, pointing to her. "She's the 'C.N.' from the tree... I'm the J.L., Jr." It's all too much to even bother asking what 'L' stands for and why there's a 'Jr.' after it.

"Yes," Strickler affirms. "It's, ah, it's going to be difficult to explain..."

Jim shook his head. "No, it's not," Jim says. Because in the next picture HumanJim is looking at Claire, and she's not looking at him. And the way HumanJim looks at Claire is like how he looks at the sun from the shadows and imagines what the warmth of it feels like on his face.

Strickler doesn't need to explain who Claire is.

Claire is the sun.

"You were very happy together for all her life," Strickler said, seeming to understand the understanding that Jim had come to. "She lived to be quite old for a human until she became ill and..."

Jim winces. He doesn't want to hear this part.

Strickler can see he doesn't want to hear this part. "Well, she fought very hard for trollkind. Half the world didn't believe we existed, and the other half didn't want us to exist whether they believed it or not. She changed so much. She's the reason it's alright to send you to the surface. She's the reason people love you on the surface. Without Claire, I don't believe we would have been able to bring you to the hospital today."

Jim is silent a moment. "And I loved her?"

"With all your heart, Jim," Strickler answers without hesitation. His eyes are not sympathetic. They're empathetic.

Jim spends the remainder of the night combing through the book, asking questions, receiving answers. He sees an old man in a blue turtleneck and pop up every now and then in the book. His mom calls the man "Walt." (Jim asks if Walt is his father. Strickler replies with a half-chuckle and says, "In a sense.") He sees the transformation from human to troll. He sees Blinky and Aaarrrgghh begin to make appearances in the book. Even Strickler shows up eventually.

The very end of the book is where the spine is most broken and the page is most waterlogged. There is a single photograph of Strickler and his mother. Her arms are around his neck. His are around her waist.

Me and my Walt 3

Strickler looks away when Jim turns to that page, but he speaks. "I suppose now you understand why you've called me 'dad' all these years..."

Jim had honestly never questioned that part of his life. He remains silent.

"Barbara..." Walt continues. "Your mother... She was an extraordinary woman. She was everything I've told you and more. She cared. That was how everyone described her. She just cared. When you became a troll, she cared so much that she hounded Blinkous for every book on troll medicine he possessed. Now, that was a sight to behold. If I thought I loved her before... She revised medicine. She rewrote it. Troll medicine and human medicine mingled for the very first time. Because of her, we can come to a place like this and care for your careless concussion."

Jim blinked, and realized the tears were spilling over his eyes. He couldn't remember anything still. Not Toby or Claire or even his own mother who had changed the world for him. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because, Jim, I know why you were distracted; and it wasn't a few initials on a tree." Strickler takes a breath and continues. "You think you're alone, don't you?"

Jim doesn't answer. Of course, he thinks that. To be a Trollhunter is to be alone.

"I believe your past is trying to call you back. It does tend to do that. It's trying to speak to you and remind you that you aren't the only Trollhunter, and I am not speaking about Kanjigar and the others."

Jim tilts his head to the side, curious, desperate, and urging Strickler on.

"Don't you see, Jim? They're all still protecting you. Toby taught about trolls, Claire fought for us, your mother healed us. They are generations-long testaments to how you are loved. Yes, you are loved. They do not love you in the past tense. They have laid down the foundations to love you until the day you die, even knowing that you couldn't remember them forever."

Jim takes a wobbly breath and begins to cry right there in the hospital room. Strickler's hand is on his back. His love for Jim is present, too. And for the first time in over a hundred years, Jim doesn't feel the pain of not remembering. He only feels a sweet sorrow as he parts from his need to know everything about his past. The love his family left behind for him was meant to be enough, and it would be.

The clock buzzed as another hour passed. 4:00 AM.

"We had better return to Trollmarket," Strickler remarked.

Jim nodded, stood, and attempted to hand the book back the Strickler.

Strickler held up a hand. "I said I'm not taking the book back, and I meant it. I've hoarded it for far too long."

The red book suddenly felt heavier in Jim's hands. It was his responsibility to keep, and open, and think about every now and then.

"And if you're looking for further reading on your life," Strickler said with a humorous glint in his eye, "I'm sure Blinkous would be more than happy to lend you some of his history books."

Now, Jim was unafraid to learn the past. A trip to Blinky's library was overdue. Nevertheless, Jim returned the humor. "Geez, I don't know, Dad. I really don't like studying history."

Strickler chuckled and patted Jim on the back. "I know, Young Atlas. I know."


End file.
